The practice of replacing cod with cheaper alternatives and selling it to consumers at inflated prices is rampant in the Republic, with more than a quarter of all cod sold here being wrongly labelled, according to new research.
The study, carried out by researchers at University College Dublin and published in the scientific journal Fish and Fisheries yesterday, found that 28 per cent of the cod being sold in in Ireland is mislabelled compared with just 7 per cent in the UK.
Cheaper fish including pollack and whiting are sold as cod with the vast majority of mislabelled cod products proving to be smoked, breaded or battered which allows retailers conceal the appearance, smell and the taste of the fish fillet.
The UCD scientists used DNA barcoding techniques to identify 226 cod products purchased from supermarkets, fishmongers and takeaway outlets across Ireland and the UK and compared the results against the product labels. In 37 of the 131 cod products purchased in Ireland, the fish was not cod.
“We found mislabelled cod products in each type of outlet, and identified that most of the mislabelled cod products were actually less expensive fish species substituted for cod and sold to consumers at a price premium,” said Dr Stefano Mariani, from the university’s School of Biology and Environmental Science.
The research also found threatened species of cod being sold as “sustainably sourced” in one supermarket which it did not identify. All of the cod products mislabelled as “sustainably sourced” Pacific cod were purchased from a single supermarket chain which does business in both the Republic and the UK.
Cod remains the most popular white fish consumed in Ireland and demand is still high in spite of the fact that local Atlantic cod stocks have been seriously depleted and much of the cod is now imported.
Under EU rules, labels on packaged products sold in supermarkets should allow a single item to be traced back to the processing plant that originally supplied it.
Despite the clear regulations the team at UCD could not properly identify the source of the mislabelling but they said there were “strong indications” that the mislabelling was taking place at both the supplier and retailer level.
The study supports the findings of another piece of research carried out by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and published earlier this year. It reported that one third of Ireland’s chippers were routinely substituting cheaper fish for cod so they could sell it at inflated prices.
The authority took samples from 111 retail outlets, fish shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and takeaways across the State and found that 19 per cent had been labelled incorrectly.
Takeaways were by far the worst offenders and 32 per cent were found to have wrongly labelled the fish they were selling either through ignorance or with a view to ripping consumers off, the authority said.
